Contents of the Dead Man's Pocket Summary

Jack Finney’s short story “Contents of the Dead Man’s Pocket” was originally published in the magazines Good Housekeeping and Collier’s in 1956. Although not as highly regarded as Finney's The Body Snatchers or Time and Again, "Contents" still exhibits the author's concern with time and the struggle to escape from its grip. The story's protagonist, Tom Benecke, illustrates the delicate balance between what people tend to prioritize in life and spend the most time on versus what ends up arguably being the more worthwhile investment of that time. Benecke has tremendously invested himself, including all of his leisure time, in completing research to gain a higher position at the grocery store where he is employed. In the process of working so hard, Benecke neglects his wife, Clare, and his life outside of his job. It takes a near-death experience for Benecke to realize that he has been wasting valuable portions of his life that he could have spent with his wife. Faced with the prospect of not ever having those opportunities again, Benecke mourns the death he created—the death of time—and resolves to save his life by valuing the time he is given.

The story begins with Benecke tied up in his work while his wife is getting ready to attend a movie. Insisting that he must finish the work that he has spent a month compiling, Benecke allows his wife to leave alone. Upon her exit, a gust of wind blows the one page with his work out the window of his eleventh-story apartment above Lexington Avenue. The paper lands too far beyond his reach, and because Benecke cannot conceive of abandoning all of the work he has completed, he climbs onto the narrow ledge, beginning what becomes a physically dangerous and emotionally agonizing journey to retrieve the paper.

Finney delves into Benecke’s thoughts as the character fearfully edges along the ledge and comes close at one point to losing his footing when forced to look down. Thoughts rush through Benecke’s mind of everything that he will not have a chance to do and how this may be the very last moment of his life. To make the situation worse, Benecke’s window falls shut when he finally manages to get back to it with his paper. Attempting to gain the attention of anyone on the street below or in another apartment building, Benecke begins slowly emptying his pockets. When he has nothing but his yellow work paper left, Benecke realizes that the one thing he risked his entire life for would say absolutely nothing about him if he were to fall to his death.

The detail with which Finney presents Tom Benecke’s torment creates strong suspense and allows a firsthand experience of the woe with which Benecke realizes what he has made of his life and what he should have done with that time instead.

Tom Benecke's Epiphany

The protagonist of "Contents of the Dead Man's Pocket" attains maturity as a result of his terrifying experience out on the narrow ledge eleven dizzying floors above the street. What motivated him to climb out there in the first place was his dreams of glory. Like many young men he had unrealistic ambitions and fantasies. He was only one of the worker bees in the gigantic bee hive called Manhattan. But he had to go through a life-threatening ordeal in order to find out how small he really was.

The turning point in Tom Benecke's fantastic experience comes when he is forced to open his eyes and look down. He has cautioned himself not to do that for fear that the dazzling, dizzying spectacle of the swarming street far below would give him vertigo and cause him to fall to his death. But once he had gotten to the precious piece of paper he was after, he found that he could not get his fingers on it without opening his eyes at least for a moment and looking down at it.

At that instant he saw, between his legs and far below, Lexington Avenue stretched out for miles ahead. He saw, in that instant, the Loew's theater sign, blocks ahead past Fiftieth Street; the miles of traffic signals, all green now; the lights of cars and street lamps; countless neon signs; and the moving black dots of people. And a violent instantaneous explosion of absolute terror roared through him.

Benecke realizes in that moment how big and cold and indifferent the world is, and at the same time how small and insignificant he is himself. He could fall to his death and it wouldn't matter to anyone except his wife--who would probably wonder how it could have happened and possibly suspect he had committed suicide. He is a nobody. He understands his place in the universe. He is figuratively and literally standing on a tiny foothold clinging to a brick wall. He has risked what happiness he enjoyed for the sake of a pat on the back and a word of praise.

The Roman historian Tacitus (56-177 A.D.) wrote an observation which has often been quoted in various languages ever since.

Etiam sapientibus cupido gloriae novissima exuitur. (“The thirst for fame is the last thing of all to be laid aside by wise men.”)

Milton, paraphrasing Tacitus in iambic pentameter, calls the desire for glory "The last infirmity of noble mind." The implication is that a mature man will realize his limitations and be content with a modest existence. Oftentimes we lose what we have in striving to get more.

Clare Benecke

Tom Benecke's wife Clare appears only very briefly at the beginning of the story, already on her way out of their apartment, and she does not reappear at the end. It might have been more practical for Tom to wait for her at home after he had succeeded in getting back inside. Finding her at Loew's theater among an audience that could have numbered 1500 people would have been difficult. In those days an usherette would have had to accompany him up and down the dark aisles with her flashlight. They would have been annoying all the other patrons while the movie was in progress. Even if he found her, he probably wouldn't have been able to sit beside her because the seats would all be taken. The author decided to have Tom go to the theater because he didn't want to have to describe their reunion. Clare is very much a minor character. She is described as:

...a slender, very pretty girl with light brown, almost blonde hair--her prettiness emphasized by the pleasant nature that showed in her face.

The author, Jack Finney, obviously did not want to create the impression that Tom's story was all about his discovering that he should have been paying more attention to his wife. Clare is just one of the things Tom has been neglecting in his unrealistic ambition to become a great success. It might be said that the movie being shown at Loew's is itself another of those things. He is missing out on the enjoyment that is available in a city like New York. His wife tells him:

"It's just that I hate you to miss this movie; you wanted to see it too."

The city has everything to offer in the way of entertainment, recreation, and cultural enrichment. Tom realizes that he has been sacrificing everything in his pursuit of the American Dream. The author probably did not want to place undue emphasis on Tom's relationship with Clare because he wanted to express a more universal message.

Tom is not a unique individual. There are millions like him who become "workaholics" because they are so absorbed in achieving more and more status--and more and more money--that they neglect everything. If they have wives, they neglect them. If they have children, they wake up someday to realize that their children have grown up without them. If they have artistic or intellectual interests, they realize they never took the time to cultivate them. Tom must see all this when he realizes that he is on the point of sacrificing his life for a yellow sheet of paper with some notes intended to impress someone higher up the corporate ladder who wouldn't even recognize him on the elevator. He is giving away the time that should be his to enjoy, to relax, to share with his young wife. He works hard enough at the office. Why should he be working late at night too? Perhaps he dreams about work in his sleep. Being out on that ledge was the worst thing and the best thing that ever happened to Tom.

We then recognize that the best the world has to offer is a painless, quiet, and tolerable existence to which we restrict our claims in order to be the more certain of making them good. For the surest way not to become very unhappy is for us not to expect to be very happy. Merck, the friend of Goethe's youth, recognized this truth for he wrote: 'Everything in this world is ruined by the excessive pretension to happiness and indeed in a measure that corresponds to our dreams. Whoever is able to get rid of this and desires nothing but what he has in hand can get along in the world.' Arthur Schopenhauer

Tom Benecke's Interoffice Memo

The opening sentence of "Contents of the Dead Man's Pocket" shows the primitive way in which many important documents were typed in the days before word processors.

At the little living-room desk Tom Benecke rolled two sheets of flimsy and a heavier top sheet, carbon paper sandwiched between them, into his portable.

He is preparing to type an important document on his portable typewriter. He has one heavy "top sheet," a piece of good-quality paper, plus two "flimsies," which were yellow second sheets for making two additional copies. Between each sheet is one sheet of carbon paper--so there would be two sheets of carbon paper, two yellow second sheets, and one sheet of twenty-pound bond typing paper all neatly aligned together and rolled into the portable-typewriter's platen. Secretaries in office all across the land had to do much of their typing in this same way. There were no word processors and no way of making halfway decent photocopies in 1956 when the story was published. The carbon copies were the only copies. If anything had to be changed (which was often the case) then the whole original and carbon copies had to be typed over again. The typewriter keys had to be struck pretty hard in order to make sure that each letter would be legible all the way through to the second carbon copy. And what a mess if the typist goofed! It is extremely difficult for even a good typist to type a whole page without making one typographical error. A mistake had to be corrected on the original, then on the first carbon copy, and then on the second carbon copy. She could either use a special eraser (which often tore through the paper) or paint over the error with what was called "white-out." And the typist had to be careful to keep all six sheets properly aligned after making the correction.

Jack Finney was a professional freelance writer. He undoubtedly had a lot of experience with typing his stories and making one or two carbon copies to keep for his files. Copies were not acceptable by editors in those days, and there was no such thing as "multiple submissions accepted," as there is by many periodicals today. We sense that Finney's hero is in the "wholesale grocery business" because the author did not want to write a story about a writer writing. It would sound too introspective. But he is probably writing a fictitious account of something that actually happened to him when he was working on one of his short stories. He probably had a lot of notes scribbled on a sheet of "flimsy" and the sheet flew out the window. Chances are that he did not try to retrieve it. Chances are that the sheet wasn't even retrievable but flew away like a soaring bird and was lost forever in the urban jungle of Manhattan.

Sometimes such inspirations cannot be recaptured. We write them down because we know we are going to forget them. The best ideas come from the unconscious. They are like messages from the muses--or from the gods. We need to capture them on the wing--even if they come to us in dreams and we have to wake ourselves up, turn on the light, and scribble down a few words that will remind us of the magical elusive idea.

Sir Francis Bacon advised:

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.

Some thoughts can be extremely valuable. How many precious thoughts are lost to mankind because they never got written down?

And according to an ancient Chinese saying:

The faintest ink is better than the best memory.

The experience of losing a precious idea can make some people keep pens and notebooks everywhere within easy reach--in their coat pocket or purse, in the glove compartment of their car, on the bedside table, and right beside the telephone, among other important places.

“An idea isn’t put into a man’s head to be buried; it’s put into his head to be useful.”Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

Acrophobia

According to Wikipedia, the correct psychological term for fear of heights is acrophobia.

Most people experience a degree of natural fear when exposed to heights, known as the fear of falling....Acrophobia sufferers can experience a panic attack in high places and become too agitated to get themselves down safely.

In "Contents of the Dead Man's Pocket," the author plays on our "natural fear when exposed to heights." Tom Benecke is experiencing acrophobia to an extreme degree, and we are experiencing it along with him, since we have been beguiled into climbing out there on the ledge with him in our imaginations.

Some psychiatrists such as C. G. Jung would suggest that there are hidden implications in Jack Finney's story. The fear of heights many people experience in dreams has been attributed to an unconscious fear of moving up in the world socially and financially. In other words, a fear of falling experienced in a dream--or conceivably in creating a work of creative fiction--may represent a fear of success. It might even be suggested that Tom Benecke did not really climb out on that ledge but only dreamt he was doing it. The author intentionally creates a solution to Tom's acrophobic problem which will provide positive truth that he was really trapped outside and really in imminent danger of falling to his death.

He heard the sound, felt the blow, felt himself falling forward, and his hand closed on the living-room curtains, the shards and fragments of glass showering onto the floor. And then, kneeling there on the ledge, an arm thrust into the room up to the shoulder, he began picking away the protruding slivers and great wedges of glass from the window frame, tossing them in onto the rug. And, as he grasped the edges of the empty window frame and climbed into his home, he was grinning in triumph.

The shards and fragments of glass on the living-room floor are evidence that the window was broken from the outside. It was not a dream.

Why should anyone be afraid of success? There are many articles about this fear accessible on the internet. One that appeared in Psychology Today includes this paragraph:

"The fear of success is a very unique issue that arises when you are genuinely creating change and moving forward in your life," says Ti Caine, a hypnotherapist and life coach based in Sherman Oaks, California. "The fear of success is very real because the future is real--we're all heading there--and what we imagine for our future has an enormous influence on us."

A classic novel dealing with the psychological problems experienced by a man who is succeeding impressively in the business world is The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells. Lapham is a lower-class entrepreneur who feels uncomfortable in the upper-middle-class social world into which his business success is inexorably drawing him. According to the eNotes Study Guide on the novel:

Silas Lapham, a millionaire paint manufacturer in Boston. He is respected in business circles, but his family is not accepted socially. Garrulous, bourgeois, burly, and brusque, he reflects traits of the self-made man who loves his maker, yet he is compassionate with outsiders and loving to his family. Babbitt-like, he emulates men he has admired for their savoir faire. Bankrupt after a series of business reverses, he gladly leaves the material comforts of Boston to return with his family to the modest living of their earlier days.

Sigmund Freud maintained that creative stories or "made-up" dreams could be interpreted in the same way as real dreams. Jack Finney's short story might be interpreted as the author's unconscious expression of his fear of success as a writer. He was a good writer but never an outstanding success. Henry James writes feelingly about the perils of success for a creative writer in his marvelous short story "The Great Good Place." The middle-aged protagonist, George Dane, has achieved international fame as a writer and finds that it is causing him great stress, frustration, and weariness, along with making it more and more difficult for him to do his writing. He dreams of escaping from the responsibilities and demands of his exposed position to a sanctuary he thinks of as "The Great Good Place" where he can be at peace and regain his own soul. William Butler Yeats seems to be expressing the same fantasy in his poem "Sailing to Byzantium."

Published in Collier's Magazine and Good Housekeeping in 1956, "Contents of the Dead Man's Pocket" is a short story by Jack Finney that depicts the terror that can enter everyday life.

Clare and Tom Benecke are a young married couple residing in an eleventh-story apartment on Lexington Avenue in New York. An ambitious ad man, Tom is still working on a grocery-store project that will earn him either a promotion or raise, so he sends his wife to the movies without him, promising to meet her later. As Clare leaves, a draft sends Tom's fact sheet of yellow paper out the opened window as the door closes. Running to the window, Tom sees the sheet lying a yard away on the ledge:

It was hard for him to understand that he actually had to abandon it—it was ridiculous—and he began to curse.

After working two months on this data sheet, Tom determines to retrieve it, calculating that he can be back to the window in less than two minutes. Impulsively, he steps out onto the ledge, edging his way to the corner where another apartment that juts out holds the sheet. Tom lowers his body, but he cannot quite reach it, so he must duck his head an inch lower. With the top of his head and his knees pressed against the brick, he lowers his right shoulder so his fingers can pull loose the paper. But, in so doing, Tom sees the street below and "a violent instantaneous explosion of absolute terror" runs through him.

Paralyzed with the fear of death, it became impossible for Tom to walk back. As seconds pass, Tom yells "Help!" but no one hears. Out of "utter necessity" Tom forces his feet to move. In slow, sidling steps he inches his way, then stumbles, smashing his right foot into his left ankle; he staggers and almost falls. With his fingers pressed onto the edging of his window and the full weight of his staggering body, the window slams shut. For an instant that feels...

(The entire section is 723 words.)

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First published in Collier’s Magazine (October 26, 1956), “Contents of the Dead Man’s Pocket” by Jack Finney is a modern American short story set in New York City. Through the story’s protagonist, Tom Benecke, Finny examines the concept of personal success in relation to the American business culture of the 1950s. In addition to Tom Benecke, the story features only one other character, Tom’s wife, Clare.

Tom and Clare are an attractive young married couple who live in a small apartment high above Lexington Avenue. As the story begins, Clare is dressing to go to the movies, but Tom has chosen to stay home to complete a marketing project to display grocery store products in a new way. He is driven to finish his work, hoping that his efforts will impress his boss and lead to professional advancement. Tom is ambitious and career-oriented. He wants to succeed, and he defines success as having money “rolling in.” Tom wants to go out with his wife, but he is obsessed with his work. When Clare leaves, alone, Tom feels guilty but turns immediately to his paperwork laid out on his desk near the window he had opened moments before.

After closing the door behind Clare, Tom is horrified to see a single sheet of yellow paper fly out the open window. This is the page containing all of his project research notes, gathered through hours and hours of extra work on many nights and weekends. Tom watches the paper slide along the building’s ledge three feet below his window, finally becoming lodged five feet away in a corner where the exterior wall of the adjacent apartment projects farther into space over the avenue far below. Tom’s mind races as he stares at the yellow paper—a symbol of his hard work, sacrifice, and future success.

Even though he tries, Tom cannot accept its loss; ignoring his better judgment, he climbs through the open window and stands on the narrow ledge, eleven stories above the street, on a cold and windy autumn night. He intends to retrieve the paper. With his face and body pressed against the brick building, he will hold on to the bricks with his finger tips and shuffle sideways to the corner, get the paper, and shuffle back to his window. As Tom moves away from his warm, lighted apartment into the darkness, he undertakes what turns out to be a truly terrifying journey.

The story describes Tom’s ordeal in vivid, specific chronological detail. After finally working his way to the paper and bending to pick it up, Tom pulls it loose; then he sees Lexington Avenue many stories below. The sudden realization of his tenuous physical position on the ledge terrorizes him. Jerking upright and shuddering violently, he almost falls to his death. He struggles to overcome his fear, breathes deeply, and gets control. Calmer but unable to move, Tom...

(The entire section is 1152 words.)

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